poetess, but his estimate of what might be accomplished by Scotch ladies
was afterwards fully borne out by Lady Anne Lindsay, the authoress of
"Auld Gray," and Lady Nairn.]

What a pity it is I was not born in the golden age of Louis the
Fourteenth, when it was not only the fashion to write folios, but to
read them too! or rather, it is a pity the same fashion don't subsist
now, when one need not be at the trouble of invention, nor of turning
the whole Roman history into romance for want of proper heroes. Your
campaign in Scotland, rolled out and well be-epitheted, would make a
pompous work, and make one's fortune; at sixpence a number, one should
have all the damsels within the liberties for subscribers: whereas now,
if one has a mind to be read, one must write metaphysical poems in blank
verse, which, though I own to be still easier, have not half the
imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity.
Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded
"Cleopatra and Pharamond," and approve "The Pleasures of the
Imagination," "The Art of Preserving Health," and "Leonidas!" I beg the
age's pardon: it has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.

Adieu! dear Harry. Thank you seriously for the poem. I am going to town
for the birthday, and shall return hither till the Parliament meets; I
suppose there is no doubt of our meeting then.

Yours ever.

P.S.--Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with Drummond's
History of the five King Jameses, pray look it over. I have lately read
it, and like it much. It is wrote in imitation of Livy; the style
masculine, and the whole very sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes